Archive

Quotes

The vice presidency isn’t worth a pitcher of warm piss.

—John Nance Garner, c. 1967

Every country has the government it deserves.

—Joseph de Maistre, 1811

The most hateful torment for men is to have knowledge of everything but power over nothing.

—Herodotus, c. 425 BC

No human life, not even the life of a hermit, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.

—Hannah Arendt, 1958

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

—Thomas Jefferson, 1787

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

—Mario Cuomo, 1985

Every communist must grasp the truth: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

—Mao Zedong, 1938

To be turned from one’s course by men’s opinions, by blame, and by misrepresentation shows a man unfit to hold office.

—Quintus Fabius Maximus, c. 203 BC

The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.

—Dean Acheson, 1970

I am no courtesan, nor moderator, nor tribune, nor defender of the people: I am myself the people.

—Maximilien Robespierre, 1792

No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispossessed or outlawed or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him, nor will we send against him except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

—Magna Carta, 1215

Do that which consists in taking no action, and order will prevail.

—Laozi, c. 500 BC

I am invariably of the politics of the people at whose table I sit, or beneath whose roof I sleep.

—George Borrow, 1843